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Standard 9.4: External evaluation

Program leadership, program partners, and all stakeholders participate in external reviews and statewide data collection designed to examine and improve program quality and effectiveness and to inform policy makers and stakeholders.

Program leaders are encouraged to collaborate with other programs, as this can have positive effects:

  • One program’s evaluation practices can benefit from the work of others
  • The results from evaluations conducted by other induction/mentoring programs can give program leaders a better understanding of their own program
  • Evaluation results can contribute to a better understanding of the policies and practices of teacher induction, a relatively recent concept in teacher education

The following are some suggestions for establishing such a collaborative:

  • Programs that are working with an external evaluator may find that the evaluator can recommend other, similar induction/mentoring programs for study. It may be possible to establish relationships with those institutions that enable sharing of information.
  • Regional Offices of Education can enable an ongoing collaboration leading the way to a pooling of data, forms, and procedures.
  • Higher education institutions have an inherent interest in learning how well their graduates are doing in teaching. It may be possible to collaborate with other schools in ways that are coordinated by the faculty of nearby institutions.
  • Statewide organizations and conferences enable programs to share program evaluation data and learn from the experiences of others.
  • Some statewide organizations (e.g. the Illinois New Teacher Collaborative) and national organizations (e.g. the New Teacher Center, the Association of Teacher Educators, and the National Association of Professional Development Schools hold annual conferences and publish journals.

As a program grows and the results are demonstrated to have an impact on the quality of beginning teachers, program leaders are encouraged to consider ways to contribute to the common good of teacher development. They can disseminate results outside their local context, to other programs, at professional conferences, and through publications.

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